a conspiracy of cartographers

i. Things that are disconcerting and hilarious when rewatching X2 for the first time in years: [a] the discovery that Mystique is, in fact, played by Roxie from Eastwick, oh my god I have seen Roxie BLUE and NAKED, my life is a little more complete now; [b] Peter Wingfield is totally randomly Stryker's second-in-command? and my brain has just as much trouble computing him as a soldier as it does whenever I see John Sheppard's ridiculous face. Apparently, the more stuff I watch, the smaller the acting pool appears to be. I don't think I'm complaining, though.

ii. WHITE COLLAR. :D ( 2x07: UNMITIGATED JOY, mostly. )

Real life processing post coming at some point when my brain and my body are actually in the same place long enough that I can do it without flipping out. In the meantime, This Is Why I'll Never Be An Adult more or less sums it up. It didn't actually occur to me that I had this cycle, but when I started typing up my explanation of the ways in which mine differs, it ... doesn't. Huh.

I am currently in the middle of a "clean all the things?" moment, but I need to keep metaphorically cleaning or actual dire things will happen. I am taking, like, a half hour to REBEL WITH INTERNET, though. So, some related fannish things:

1. Stonehenge Apocalypse is pretty hilariously awful, guys. I am not willing to ever rewatch it without the aid of alcohol, I do not think the poor people of Vancouver should ever be made to do British accents, and a small flat bit in the countryside outside Vancouver does not look remotely like Salisbury Plain (made even more painfully evident by an almost back-to-back watching of Pandorica Opens) -- but I now know that Peter Wingfield can act for reals, not because they gave him anything good, but because his body language was completely different.

2. Somehow this did not satisfy me (or scare me off), as I appear to be doing a bit of Canadian Actor Bingo, like I did last summer -- only last summer, it was by way of Callum and therefore (mostly) Toronto Bingo, whereas if I follow Peter Wingfield around, it appears to be Vancouver Bingo. I'm now watching this cute and incredibly short-lived show called Queen of Swords; I have no way of knowing if it's objectively any good, because they had me at "Basically it's Zorro, only Zorro is a gorgeous intelligent kickass woman." Goddamn. And the main villain of the piece is played by Valentine Pelka, who is Kronos -- and I knew Kronos was attractive, in an evil sort of way, but without the scar and with the addition of a goatee, he looks really freakishly like a young Roger Delgado, be still my heart. And Peter Wingfield waltzes into town as an adorable doctor who has been traumatized by the Napoleonic Wars, and although his name is Robert Helm, I keep on being convinced that his name is supposed to be Benjamin Adams, because he is clearly Methos in disguise.

3. A vid rec! Unbelievable, a Highlander vid for which you ... probably need the context of the show to fully appreciate. I spent about the first minute giggling, because Duncan's hypocrisy is transparent and funny, right? I spent the second minute going "...huh." And I spent the last minute making the same faces as Methos, because 178 confirmed kills, sdfklfdjfd. It makes me go YES YES EXACTLY and is great.

4. New tag. /o\

I have a confession: for the past few days, in between all the real life stuff I have been doing, I've been spending my free time not doing more of the Babylon 5 rewatch but instead a rewatch of the Methos bits of Highlander. (Why? I need more Methos fic like burning, and with a few excellent exceptions, the stuff that is out there is giving me the "If you want this story told, tell it yourself" feeling. Oops.) I think I am discovering the full extent of my horrible weakness for 90s television. In any case, I am done with that now and we'll soon return to your semi-regularly scheduled B5-watching; in the meantime, the net result of my Highlander rewatch is mumble nearly 10,000 words of fic notes, what is wrong with me and a bunch of screencaps.

The latter are here reposted for your edification.

This is not a Show Is Awesome post. Show is indeed occasionally awesome, but I am not looking for converts; I didn't even watch the whole thing. I think it's cute, and occasionally hilarious, and sometimes even quite good; I think the bits I watched are well worth watching if, like me, you have apparently a bullet-proof character kink for five-thousand-year-old snarky bastards who occasionally save the world because their dumbass boyfriends like to play hero.

In any case, it means that this is instead a Methos And His Frequent Swordporn Are Awesome post. It started out entirely as caps of Methos getting threatened with swords and making great faces about that, but then it got slightly out of control and comes with a Duncan/Methos agenda, which means stuff like painting houses together and slamming each other against Range Rovers. As you do.

( 30 caps. So a five-thousand-year-old man and a Scottish Highlander walk into a bar ... )

Thank you and goodnight.